Behind Every Great Man
by Cards
Summary: No one is the way they are by themselves, a look at those who Spot cares for and who shaped him to be the man he is.
1. His Partner

Cards was just there a majority of the time, she was around.

She was there.

She looked at him at times like a puppy, whimpering and wanting.

He wasn't like that. He laughed instead, because he saw how horrible the two of them would be together. They fought, they screamed, and hell he didn't think of her like that. She was his kid sister for all intents and purposes. They'd grown up together.

They fought and screamed not because they had things between them that needed to happen, but because they were the same person.

He couldn't, much as everyone thought he was in love with himself fall for someone just like him. He wanted someone who he wasn't.

Spot was glad the day he saw shy, quiet Preacher stroke back Cards' hair. Breaking out of character for him but honestly showing the poor oblivious Cards that he cared. He's been following her almost as long as he's been around. Spot wanted Cards to be happy he just knew it wasn't right for her to be with him.

She was his partner, if he needed someone to cover his back, then it'd be her. If he needed money, he knew that without another word Cards would hand it over to him without saying a word. He would do the same for her, he would put his life at stake for her.

But he couldn't imagine kissing her.

He loved her though. And he hoped that when she was safe, with Preacher. He would laugh at the idea at times.

Preacher was exactly the opposite of Cards, his religion was so important to him. Cards had given up on god years ago. She couldn't see the beauty around her so often because she would see the ugly. But she needed the underlying support that Religion would give her. Preacher would stand by her, stand by her anger and help her quietly and calm over everything. That was all she needed. She needed someone who wouldn't rant back at her, who would let her finish and then hold her. Preacher would.

Spot loved Cards, how could he not? But he couldn't be her lover.

Disclaimer: I don't own Spot.

Author's Notes: This is NOT part of my saga. Not in the least. This is a series about Spot and how he views the women/girls in his life. There will be a bunch of chapters, all original characters, but some surprising, and I think all but two of them will be from other fics. Cards of course is from a ton of them, but mostly Not Like That, The Things that Make her Cry, and Intertwined Fates.


	2. His Lover

Magic was not the first woman he slept with, he never told anyone who that was. But she was the first who he held.

He'd been a cool little boy, distant from almost everyone in the neighbor hood and unnaturally close to Cards, making her aunt fear for the poor girl's reputation. But then they disappeared.

Spot's Uncle had lived with him and his mother for years, since his father had been murdered, leaving his mother weak of spirit. Spot's uncle was a cruel man and had turned the happy young boy into a withdrawn sullen young man.

Cards had seen it, and pulled Spot out of it all.

And Magic had opened her arms to him. She had let him just be with her, let him whimper about the pain in his life, quietly after a session of love making had tiered him out, letting the defenses he'd built up for so long fall.

And Magic had slowly become unattractive to him. She had sat on his bed one too many times, laughing with him, and talking with him about Spain. She'd gone dancing with him, she'd hung on his arm as they walked about, they'd laughed together.

She was still beautiful, her body perfect. Her lips still hung on his with the same passion, her hands stroked against his chest the same way.

But he pulled away from her now, he couldn't feel the way she pressed against him with out feeling wrong.

He had stopped pulling at her hand, He had instead used his hand to ball into a fist to beat a boy's face in for grabbing at her.

He didn't know anymore what to do with her.

He wanted her to be happy, he knew for some reason he couldn't. That he had stopped looking at her as a woman and started seeing a scared little girl who was in far to over her head and was running out of luck and connections.

He saw her, so scared and alone. And he wanted to hug her to him and not let the world hurt her. But Magic wasn't like that. She wanted the man who did that to be the man she took to her bed as well.

Bumlets was that man.

And Spot had beaten him up, not even starting with the threat that he would. In his mind Magic had been through more then enough and didn't need the quiet boy to hurt her even more.

On her wedding day though, he'd walked back and held her, standing in place of a father to give her away.

She'd been so scared and worried. He'd simply held her, the ways she had him a few years before. Letting her be scared, but safe.


	3. His Mother

When Maria Calatori came from Italy and settled with her family in Mulberry Bend she was known for the steel that ran through her veins, and her beauty. She was slight, with golden skin and bright blue eyes. Her hair was spun like gold. She looked so different from her weak sick siblings with their watery brown eyes and limp hair.

She was what held the struggling family together, her grit and determination as well as her strong faith in the church.

She worked hard, refusing the typical jobs offered to poor Italian women and taking a job as a ladies maid for a rich woman who had come from her town and made her money.

She came home and brought a good pay in, she was able to pay for good Jewish doctors to bring life into her sibling's sick, dead eyes. She learned to read, she learned to write.

And then she met John Conlon. He had dark brown hair, green eyes and a laughing mouth. It was the most typical story in the world. The two fell in love, Maria left her job to marry John in a church wedding that neither family approved of.

They moved to Brooklyn because it was cheaper, and less restricting for a couple like them. John got a job working on the docks and he even enjoyed it, he liked the backbreaking work and the male companionship of men who all agreed with him. To him, it wasn't like he was in a work force, no, he was with other Irish men who felt that men didn't cry, and that men knew best.

He was surrounded by those who told him that he couldn't lean on anyone.

Sean was born with his mother's skin, but his eyes, when he opened them were so clear that it startled the midwife, she whispered a prayer. Because the baby had seen through her. Had seen that she was planning on over charging the young mother whose labor had been almost unnecessarily easy. She shook her head, the baby couldn't know that. But at the same time, she didn't over charge.

Sean's mother was strong during his childhood, she created a home for the little boy and his father. She forged friendships with the irish neighbors and was glad to have woman next door who had adopted their niece, a few months younger then Sean and a permanent playmate.

John was gone for most of the days, and in the nights all he did was collapse next to his pretty young wife, turning farther and more into a dock worker and less as an individual. He couldn't turn to his wife, and tell her of his fear, of how much he wanted her. Because he didn't feel that was what he could do. But he loved her.

And she loved him, they loved each other deeply and passionately, but now they couldn't show it.

And Sean knew it, he had his father's mouth. At least it appeared that he did. His mouth was normally set into a line of concentration as he looked at his parents, confused but not asking.

His mother, being from an incredibly emotional family saw no problem with his tears, she encouraged them over small things. Like when he fell and hurt his knee. Her reasoning was that he would need to be strong over the big things, and it hurt to fall. No reason not to cry.

So he did, until his father beat him for it.

Sean didn't know it, but that night was the first that his father spent with a mistress.

Two years passed, and his father was gone. Presumably working.

Then the news came.

His mother hung herself two days after the sobbing woman, more of a girl delivered the news that the man they both slept with was dead, murdered.

Sean knew his mother had been strong. She raised him to be. But she left him with only an uncle who didn't feel a connection to what he thought of as a Mutt.

So he forgot all that.

His mother may have been strong, but she left him so weak he couldn't allow her to be so.

Author's notes: Change of pace, and kind of me putting down what I think of as cannon for Spot's past. THis is Spot's past as far as all my stories from now on. (And the Saga) I wanted to show his mother, and I wanted to get the point across that that was where he got his inner strength, but hw won't admit it.


	4. His Admirer

Sean Conlon enjoyed Brooklyn. He enjoyed playing in the streets with Katherine, the girl next door, even though the other boys used to make fun of him for it. His mother approved, she too liked that Sean played with the Kerr girl, allowing her time to talk with the Girl's aunt while they both did laundry work for the rich women of the neighborhood.

Sean stood out on their block, he didn't mean to. Not at all, he was happy to play marbles and talk big like the rest of the kids. When they gave him trouble, he didn't even think about it. Most of the big kids on the street enjoyed hasseling the smaller kids, making them run to the saftey of their stoops and older sisters.

When they tried that with Sean though, it didn't work. They taunted him, shoving Katherine, expecting the two odd children to run away.

Sean glared at them, raised his delicate chin and they looked at him. His eyes, still the same unhuman blue, crystal clear. Katherine standing next to him, her own eyes darker, hinting at something far beneith the soft sweet apperance.

The boys left them alone.

Everyone did. None of the other kids moved aside to make space for them in their games. They were left alone to do what ever. Though strangely Sean never had to ask more then once for a favor, never had to think about how something was going to happen. Everyone just made it happen for him.

There was on the street, as there was on every street at dusk the women who walked it. Sean and Katherine had been warned multiple times against speaking to the woman who painted her cheeks to red, whose dresses showed too much skin.

So they didn't. Neither saw the point in pressing the matter.

One day though, during the day far before dusk the woman didn't wear so much rouge and her dress was practical. Katherine saw her, and looked up. Her deep blue eyes catching the notice of the woman who veered over.

Sean looked up then, at the woman, who now so much plainer was stunningly beautiful. She paused and took Sean's delicate chin in her hand. She bent down and looked at him, one eyebrow quirked.

She took in the delicate features, the skinny limbs, the the golden blonde hair already begining to darken slightly, She shook her head slightly, her brown hair coiled tightly up.

Katherine watched the woman, a slight pout on her five year old face.

"What's your name?" The woman asked Sean.

"Sean" He said proudly, chin tipping up farther in her hand.

"And you?" She asked Katherine, taking in the angelic face of the girl pale skin, rosey cheeks, light blonde hair. Those troubling dark blue eyes.

"Katherine" She said, her distaste of the woman clear.

"You two are very beautiful" She said softly, turning back to Sean she said "You, Sean are going to break a lot of hearts. Starting with Katherine's" She smiled "Those eyes" She shook her head standing up and leaving the two. The two beautiful children of Brooklyn.

That was before Sean learned to hate his looks, and Katherine broke her own heart hiding her beauty.

But their eyes, the erie eyes of the two children stayed with all who saw them.

Author's notes: Something different. Random hooker who is the first to tell Sean he's attractive. I love reviews and they make my long hard days easy to deal with. Leave lots of them please? -puppy dog face-


	5. His First

Sean gulped, gripping the side of his face. He could feel the blood trickling down his perfect cheekbones. What once was delicately beautiful now is tragically so.

He is curled in a corner, and he doesn't look his age. His entire life he hasn't looked his age. From the moment he was born and opened his eyes he's looked mystical, he was a pixie at five, delicate.

At ten he's tall, his head is prouder then before, even now with his body curled in to protect himself.

"Stupid mutt" a voice drunkenly slurs. The words used to annoy him. Used to keep him angry, used to hurt him. Now they are only background to a reality he is almost afraid to leave. He looks up, his eyes scarily calm.

"Aww Jaimie..." The woman was a new one, she had a deep husky voice. "Let the boy be."

He grew up in that house.

Sean's life was a parade of the women his uncle brought home. These women who were loud and uninterested in him. He was thirteen the next time they looked at him. One of them was surprised as he opened the door. He wasn't tall anymore, he was skinny not fed well at all, but for some reason the way that it cut his cheekbones, made his once delicate chin as strong as an anvil made the woman stare at him.

"My Uncles' not in." He said softly, his voice had a forced and unhumble humility in it. There was another cut below his collarbone, which shouldn't have shown, but the shirt he wore was cut badly.

"You grew up well" She smiled at him.

"You should leave" Sean said, glaring, any false humility gone and replaced with a lack of care.

"Aww so eager to be rid of little old me?"

Sean shook his head, he didn't look his age, he didn't look ageless anymore though. He looked older, deceptively so, beautifully so.

The woman leaned in kissing him, her smoky breath against his lips.

Sean pushed her away, his hands squarely on her shoulders. "No."

"Aww boy."

The punch came from over her shoulder over the nameless woman's shoulder and hit Sean squarely in the jaw. He dropped to his knees on instinct, not wanting to have to deal with more.

The woman was tossed to the side, pushed away and falling. Sean's uncle kicking the boy's prone body. Sean gasped, turning this was and that gripping at different parts as he scurried out the door. Staring at the woman as he passed her, pounding on Katherine's door.

Katherine grew as well, her eyes still the same, blue, deep and now full, full of worry and full of fear for the boy. She pulled Sean in. Her hands stroking his face worried. Nothing in her body betraying what her eyes traitorously held.

"I learned my lesson" He screamed out to the closed door, hearing the nameless woman being taught one of his uncles lessons as well.

The next day though, she returned, taking Sean to her bed.

Author's notes: Thanks so much for the reviews. I love love love getting them and love that you all love this. That being said, if you normally read this and don't leave a review I get it. But I'm curious to see how you like this chapter, this slightly different look at his life. Two more Chapters. The last chapter is the woman/girl he spends the rest of his life with.

Also, to pimp out my other stories, if you like this read "Not like that" "Intertwined Fates" and "This one Needs us". They're all a part of the same "universe" and are actually fairly good I think. Its a detailed look at Cards/Katherine's relationship with Spot/Sean, which is anything but Mary Sueish.


	6. His Savior

At 14 Sean was starting to lose his beauty.

It happened one bruise after another. His arm got broken, healed badly. In fact, the only reason it healed at all was because Katherine had forced him to stay with her.

At 14 she had lost hers. They lived on one side of the Conlon apartment. She would hear every hit, unable to sleep she curled into a pillow about to burst into tears as his grunts of pain were heard.

At 14 Sean was ready to die.

He knew that his mother had given up. He doubted that he had the strength to actually move on past all that had happened. He couldn't wake up to one more day of beatings. Katherine was wrapped around him, trying to hold him to the safety of her aunt's home.

Her aunt no longer liked Sean. She glared at the malnourished boy, unable to see his mother's hair, or his father's eyes. Instead he was jerky, draining her niece of everything. He drained her of her beauty, the full blue eyes were now pale with worry, and they would never again reach the height of blue they had when she was young, She would never reach the potential of her beauty, falling because. As her aunt swore, she had given it all to Sean.

Just imagine what the neighbors would say if they could see the way the two of them were curled up in bed together. She knew Sean's life wasn't easy, but he wasn't her, or Katherine's responsibility.

Sean knew all that, as he lay, feeling Katherine's head against his boney back, he pulled away, gently, slowly. He waited for her to adjust to every new position as he moved from beside her. Then he knelt down, kissing her forehead and making sure her skirts seemed decent so her aunt wouldn't get the wrong impression of him. It was sure to be the last.

He debated waking the girl up, telling her goodbye in person, instead he kissed her forehead again and whispered it to her sleeping form. Then he left.

It was morning. New York didn't smell so bad to him in the morning. It was almost worth living for mornings. Mornings his uncle slept all the time. No use going to the apartment, the beating that would kill him wouldn't come till later anyhow. He leaned against a door, which opened in.

An old woman looked up at him. Sean didn't know where he'd seen her before. He hardly left unless it was to get beer for his uncle or because Katherine dragged him to sell papers.

"Your arm" She said in a heavy accent, defiantly not Irish, like most of the people in the building. "Is better"

"Oh, thanks" He said, she was the one who Katherine had begged to help him.

"Your..." the woman paused.

"Katherine" Sean supplemented, standing awkwardly, not meaning to have burst in on her.

"Katerina" She nodded. "She is very... how do you say" She paused "devoted."

"Yeah."

"I hear you know." The woman said,

"What"

She gestured to his arm. "You didn't let it heal right." She noted. "Come here, I can still help."

He walked over, "I'm going to get killed when I leave here."

"What?"

"You hear?" He questioned.

"I hear her crying. I hear you yelling."

"She doesn't cry."

"You do."

"What?" He looked over at her. His body really alive with asking the question, alive for the first time in months.

"In the hall, I hear it."

"Oh" He sat in silence as the old woman then pulled on his arm, he bit into his lip as the bone shifted slightly, blood poured down his chin.

"You are very quiet." The woman observed. Sean looked around the apartment.

"My husband beat me." She said.

"What?"

"The pain."

Sean sat, not wanting to say anything.

"He's dead now." She said. "You, are stronger."

He took a rag she offered him as he wiped the blood off his face.

"He, god will take care of him."

"Uh..."

"You, are no mutt" She smiled at him "Italiano"

He smiled.

"You will not die" She said.

"Thank you, Ma'am, for helping me, uh, before... and just now."

He hurried into Katherine's apartment, and they were both gone before his uncle tried to break down the door.

Author's notes: I wuv reviews -cute eyes- Okay, I would love some input on this, Is the woman a strong enough charachter? Does Cards seem like she's in love with him (she isn't). Does Sean seem to go through a change? Review?


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